Editor’s note: This article is part of a series called New Music Mondays, where we feature new music by musicians from the Greater Sudbury area on Mondays. If you’re an area musician and would like us to profile your work, email us at [email protected].
If you’ve visited The Trevi Bar & Grill on a Friday or Saturday night, you’ve probably run across Chad Rivette.
For the past decade, the local musician, who specializes in country music covers, has been entertaining at the venue and running its popular karaoke nights.
But of course, with the beginning of the pandemic a little over a year ago, Rivette’s regular gig was put on hiatus. He misses his Trevi family and they miss him.
“People were calling me and saying ‘Hey, we miss you,’” Rivette said.
“‘We miss going out to hear you sing. Can’t wait to go back. Do you think you maybe could put something on YouTube?’
“That’s when I was like ‘All right.’ They started giving me a couple songs they wanted to hear. The quality is not the best obviously, it’s just recorded from my phone, my tablet. I’m just trying to stay fun and stay focused and not lose my touch on music.”
That’s where he got the idea to record videos of himself playing and upload them to YouTube. You can check out a couple of his country music covers below.
Rivette, who’s 42 and married with three kids and even has a newborn grandchild, said he’s been playing in the bars for 28 years, since he was a teen.
Music is in the blood for Rivette, who comes from a very big, very musical family. “My father was in a band back in my childhood with his brothers,” and they recorded in Nashville, he said.
When he was 16 years old, he travelled to Nashville and ended up winning a CMT competition that came with a recording contract.
But his mom got sick with cancer around the same time, eventually passing away, and he ended up putting his music ambitions on the backburner.
“I ended up having a kid and just being a dad,” said Rivette. “I chose being a dad over pursuing my career.”
While Rivette has tried writing, he said his songs “ended up sounding like a rhyme,” so he focuses on covers.
He said he used to be in bands, but he got tired of having to cancel gigs if one of the band members couldn’t make it. That’s why he enjoys the stable nature of playing at The Trevi.
If you’d like to watch more of Rivette’s videos, you can check out his YouTube channel.